The Barbarous Years

The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675

Bernard Bailyn gives us a compelling account of the first great transit of people from Britain, Europe, and Africa to British North America, their involvements with each other, and their struggles with the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard.

©2012 Bernard Bailyn (P)2013 Recorded Books

brilliant and fascinating

Bailyn has constructed a book that is extremely well organized and loaded with details that flesh out the basic story of America' beginning European settlements. Bailyn uses the available statistical data to show that the settlers of Virginia are a completely different set of Englishmen than those that settled New England. I found that Bailyn's point that the early English saw themselves as natives of the west country, the north, the midlands, etc. rather than as English - until they had define themselves against other peoples. A melting pot indeed. And he points out that the Dutch only started become 'Dutch' when they were conquered by the English.
This book let me look at the early settlers in a nre light, or rather from a different angle. I was sorry to see the book end.

Excellent Listen

Bailyn added details to the past I wasn’t aware of. The reader did a fine job of cadence & as far as I could tell only mispronounced one English word. If you want to understand America’s founding past, this is an excellent read.

A bold historiography supported by a well-modulated Audible performance

Henry Strozier, whose rich voice is a mix of Walt Disney and Walter Cronkite gives a well-modulated performance of Bernard Bailyn’s vastly researched, detailed, and boldly sophisticated historiography of the population and development of America’s colonization (through the English and Dutch Indies Companies) during the seventeenth century. Not the Thanksgiving myth of the peaceful coming together of the English pilgrims and the native Indians, but a barbarous period for survival.

First rate history.

Probably the best book you can read on the earliest English settlers to North America.

Long but excellent and worth it

The storytelling of Bernard Baylin. The excellent narration. the barbarity of the stories make this book worth listening to and reading.